W-2 Taxes

[Joost]

Greetings,

I make a little more than $100k/year and roughly 20% of it goes in taxes.

Most of it is from my job (W-2).

I use the standard deduction (~$13k in 2023) but I still end up paying a lot in taxes.

I’m not married, no children, no house, no debt. Is there a way for me to still keep the remaining/usual $80k left and figure a way to have the other $20k that I usually waste away in taxes, be used in a more productive way?

if I could have that money in a 401k or retirement account, it’ll be perfect. I just don’t want to buy a bunch of stuff, get in debt and in the end, have less than the usual 80% of my money available to do what I please.

I know I should talk to an accountant but any tip or advice before talking to one would be great since I don’t know where to start.

 

[Blade Runner]

I'm not sure what you are asking, but in an average state you'll be paying around 26k in taxes (state and Feds with the standard deduction). In short, this is the issue with W2. Even putting 10k aside does nothing for you. You can do a backdoor Roth IRA for 6k, but that's post tax. The only way for you to change anything is to have a company 401k that you contribute to or contribute to more (and I don't necessarily recommend .gov retirement plans, for reasons that can be discussed elsewhere), or to have a side hustle that you can use as a way to put more in a 401k etc (same issue though).